These Top-Rated Chromebooks Put Your Old Laptop to Shame

Once reserved strictly for students, Chromebooks have evolved into highly capable laptops that are often a better alternative to similarly priced Windows notebooks. With a wide variety of entries to choose from, we've rounded up the best picks for every size and budget from Samsung, HP, and Acer, among others.

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Living with a Chrome OS notebook requires a lot less compromise than it used to. With cloud storage and services slowly taking over our digital lives, these affordable laptops are rapidly growing in popularity, and deservedly so!

The addition of support for Android apps from the Google Play store makes Chromebooks an even more attractive proposition. Today's best offerings have 360-degree touch-sensitive displays, which allow you to enjoy Chrome OS and Android apps to the fullest.

The Google Pixelbook is the poster child for the Chrome OS platform. It has a gorgeous design, superb craftsmanship, top-notch hardware, and a dedicated button for the AI-powered Google Assistant.

Thanks to Intel's seventh-generation processors and the ample amount of RAM on board, every task you perform on the Pixelbook happens instantly. The ultra thin notebook can last up to 10 hours between charges.

With a starting price tag of $999, the sleek notebook is surely pricey for a Chrome OS device, but it's also the best of its kind. Google offers an optional Pixelbook Pen stylus, which will allow you to make the most of the notebook's ultra sharp display.

The Chromebook C202SA by ASUS is our favorite pick for kids and students. The attractively priced notebook has a rugged body with rubber-enforced edges, which allow it to survive drops from up to 3 feet. The keyboard of the notebook can also survive snacks and accidental spills.

The 11.6-inch display of the notebook reclines up to 180 degrees. Good performance and up to 10 hours of battery life round up the device's notable highlights.

The Acer Chromebook R 13 Convertible has a touchscreen with a 360-degree hinge, so it can easily transform into a tablet when you want it to. Powered by a MediaTek chipset with quad-core CPU, the all-metal notebook delivers an excellent blend of performance and power efficiency.

The Chromebook R 13 convertible has up to 12 hours of battery life — enough for a full day of use. The notebook weighs a little over 3 pounds.

This 14-inch Chromebook by HP is a well-priced option with a high-quality non-touch display panel, good performance, and an excellent selection of connectivity ports. With speakers tuned by B&O Play, the notebook also offers a surprisingly good audio experience for its price point.

The notebook weighs less than 3.5 pounds. It can deliver a maximum of 10.5 hours of screen-on time before its battery needs recharging.

With a sub-$500 starting price tag, the ASUS Chromebook Flip C302 is a good alternative to the pricey Google Pixelbook. It can't match the sheer hardware capabilities or display resolution of its Google-made sibling, but it'll still deliver a fast and fluid performance, as well as access to Android apps via the Google Play store.

The Chromebook Flip has up to 10 hours of battery life, and the notebook weighs under 3 pounds.

The affordably priced Samsung Chromebook 3 is a good pick for students. It has a lightweight body, a spill-resistant keyboard, and up to 11 hours of battery life. The notebook's Intel processor isn't the fastest around, but it's more than sufficient for Chrome OS tasks.

The 11.6-inch non-touch display of the notebook won't wow you with its HD resolution. However, given its small size, it still looks plenty sharp. The screen can recline 180 degrees for easy view-sharing.

Stefan VazharovSenior Technology EditorStefan is the senior technology editor for BestProducts.com, where he’s been covering the tech industry and testing the latest gadgets since 2015; He previously covered tech products for GSMArena.com and his work can also be found on Popular Mechanics.